


The Boy With The Yellow Hair

by BrooklynBugleBoy



Series: Paging Dr. Jankowski [1]
Category: Bohemian Rhapsody (Movie 2018), Queen (Band)
Genre: 1940s Europe Mentions, Blood, Boys and Bar Fights, Dark Past, Doctors & Physicians, Drinking, Early Queen, F/M, Holocaust, M/M, Multi, Not A Great Time In History, Period-Typical Racism, Polyamory, Post-World War II, Racial slurs, Revolutionaries in the making, Sad and Happy, poland - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-03
Updated: 2019-03-10
Packaged: 2019-11-08 19:55:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17987588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrooklynBugleBoy/pseuds/BrooklynBugleBoy
Summary: Sometimes it's so easy to forget that time does not exist in a vacuum. That just because rapid advances have been made, it doesn't mean the past is so easily forgotten.But sometimes memory is a fickle thing, triggered by sounds, sights and smells.Sometimes it's so easy to forget a tragedy that wasn't your own.And reminders of that time are so jarring when they come.Especially if they come from a young doctor you meet in a bar, with yellow hair tied back in a red ribbon and the souls of six million dragging him down with every step.





	1. A Bar Fight

**Author's Note:**

> Trying to fight through the worst case of writer's block I've had in a while, just so happened to coincide with a day of volunteering at the local museum, so I jotted a few notes down and they turned into this. 
> 
> :) It really helped me a lot just forcing myself to write something and while it isn't great, it is remarkably dark in its vague references to our doctor boy's past. 
> 
> The cited quotes were taken from The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, which is one of the saddest and greatest books I have ever read. 
> 
> Enjoy I guess? :)
> 
> Also I'm Pre-Med, so enjoy the medical geek moments.

_“It's hard to not like a man who not only notices the colors, but speaks them.”_

― Markus Zusak

 

  
Jacob-Alexander was only three sips into his pint the night they met, feeling right sorry for himself after having lost yet another patient, ( _a young boy with green eyes and dark hair who’d been injured in a motor-vehicle accident and had been brought into A &E with extensive crush injuries to his chest and abdomen. The rational and clinical part of his mind told him that the boy was marked for dead the moment they pulled him out of the wreckage with the jaws of life. The human part of him, which usually screamed far louder than its compatriot, had cried when he told the young mother that her son was gone.)_

While swallowing yet another gulp of Guinness, that burned on the way down, he heard the familiar sound of a full glass mug hitting someone’s face.

_(He’d been in many a bar-fight in his life, okay)._

“Roger!” A terrified cry that tugged at something in his chest.

_Yaakov-Aleksander!_

He whipped his head around to see a skinny blonde slip of a boy staggering backwards with a muffled shout of pain, coughing with shaking hands cupped around his gushing nose. He was wearing a gaudy faux fur coat and sparkly pink high-tops over his obscenely tight red leather pants, rather distracting to the eye even in the meager lighting that the seedy bar provided. Three other young men around the same age had instantly jumped up from their seats at the bar to form a bit of a protective semi-circle around the injured youth.

One with an enormous distracting mass of black curly hair seemed to be attempting to prevent the tiny blonde from reentering the fight and get him to sit down on a barstool.

While the other two, slight as twisted together colorful pipe-cleaners, were standing in front of Curls and Blondie, twin Davids facing three Goliaths as the big bloke from before had come accompanied.

The waif with unblemished tan skin was a touch farther forwards and looked to be prodding the lead angry bloke in the chest with a single black-painted fingernail.

Jacob-Alexander couldn’t hear what the fuchsia-sporting boy said over the din, although he did see the those round glossy lips move.

All he heard was the bigger bloke’s shout of “ _Bloody Paki poofter!”_ Trying to lunge forwards and grab the reedy boy, before the doctor’s body was moving of its own accord. Oath be damned, he would not abide by that. He would never abide by something like that.

 _Do no harm_ , his lily white arse.

“ _Hey!”_ He roared, launching off his own horribly uncomfortable seat and striding towards the confrontation, exactly what he should not have done. Using those loud and annoyingly powerful lungs of his and the voice that had so often gotten him into trouble.

He was a physician, he wasn’t supposed to purposefully injure anyone.

But one look in the half-light, at the frightened faces of four boys who couldn’t have been older than their early twenties at most, bloody babies the lot of them, and he felt completely at peace as he seized the bloke easily thrice his size by the forearm, locked his ankle behind the man’s right knee and yanked at the perfect angle.

He felt the man’s patella slide out of place and stepped back to allow the mountainous creature to fall to the floor with a scream loud enough to wake the dead. “You broke my bloody leg!” Hands fisting tightly in the material as if that would somehow make it any better.

“I dislocated your kneecap actually, it would be best to go get that looked at.”

The bloke’s friends drew in closer, trying to help the caterwauling man get away.

Whilst Jacob-Alexander whipped around to focus on the bloody blonde and his posse. The boy was shaking, holding a handful of dirty bar napkins to his face. The boy with the black-fingernails was blinking at him in surprise, as were the other two.

But like the trained physician he was, he only had eyes for his patient.

Pushing his way past Curly-top and Platforms, only to kneel in front of the blonde that they’d blessedly managed to shove into a seat, _(the last thing he wanted was for the youth to faint)_. He was tilting his head back, but Jacob-Alexander reached up and gently tilted it forwards.

“Not backwards, you numpty. You’ll choke.” Yet despite the words, his voice was as achingly gentle as his touch.

He tried to squint and identify any other injuries the boy had, besides the blood that stubbornly dripped down his front, but the lighting in the pub was piss-poor.

“Are you hurt anywhere else? I can’t see anything. We need to find a place with more light.”

His clinical prodding was delicate and the boy shook his head, the words coming out slurred and hazy. “Who are you?” _Fuck._

“Ah, well _shit_ , I never introduced myself, did I?” He clasped the boy’s surprisingly calloused hand with one of his. “Dr. Jacob-Alexander Jankowski.”

The boy shook his hand back. “Roger Meddows Taylor.” He said it like it was more than a name, like it was a _title._

The young doctor smiled, admiring the boy’s confidence that was so much like his own, even with blood trickling down his face. “Is _Roger Meddows_ one name or two?”

Roger’s eyebrows furrowed. “Two?”

“Brill, mine’s one. But feel free to call me whatever you’d like.”

_He’d likely been called worse._

“I really don’t feel comfortable checking if your nose is broken in this light…” He tsked, softly, twisting the smaller blonde’s face this way and that. “If it’s badly displaced, fudging around with it could make it worse and if it isn’t displaced, I could accidentally displace it with my manipulation.” His first inclination was to suggest going to hospital. But one look from the boys was enough to silence those thoughts. 

“Oh well that’s simple enough, darling. Come home with us, our flat’s only just around the corner!” Black fingernails quipped, smiling brightly with an impressive set of teeth, a show of trust that he seemed to realize a moment too late and tried to hide.

Only to be instantly berated by Curly-top and Platforms.

“Fred! You can’t just give away our address! What if he’s a _murderer!?_ ” Curly-top’s hair bounced as he moved, waving his hands about frenetically. _A murderer?_ Well, he was scary, yes, but not quite _that._

“He did just break that bloke’s leg…” Platforms was gnawing on his bottom lip as if he was determined to make it bleed, the young doctor itched to tell him to knock it off.

But instead, he physically felt his cheeks redden at the conversation about him that was occurring _right in front of him_ , he cleared his throat and spoke in his most calm and collected tone, over-enunciating in a way that probably made him sound drunk as hell. “I didn’t break his leg, I dislocated his kneecap. Nothing was permanently damaged.” _Probably_. “Also, for the record, I swear I’m not an murderer.”

Because that sounded _so_ reassuring. And not at all like what a murderer would say.

He sighed and tenderly guided Roger’s fingers into the proper position to pinch his nasal bridge and situate the napkins beneath all the gore. “Hold pressure right there.”

The blonde stared at Jacob-Alexander for a moment, as if trying to read his soul from his eyes alone.

“Aw _bollocks_ , let’s just bring him home with us.”

At least that was what the doctor _thought_ Roger had said, it was hard to decipher the still slurred words through all the blood and post-nasal drainage.

But the other men seemed to be able to, even over the cacophony that surrounded them. _How often did this happen?_

“Fine.” Curls grumbled, looking like he wanted to say far more.

His voice died in his throat though, when he watched Jacob-Alexander tug off his expensive bulky coat and cover Roger’s shivering frame with it, the coat the blonde wore was stylish, yes, but it afforded very little warmth to it's wearer. The last thing the young physician wanted was for the boy in his care to go into _shock_ because of his core temperature dropping.

“No," Roger's shaking bone-white hands tried to weakly push it away. "That's way too nice... and I’ll get _blood_ on it.” The tiny slip of a thing mumbled and Jacob-Alexander rolled his eyes, smiling softly. _(What the hell? It wasn’t like him to be so quiet)._

“Roger, if I was afraid of a little blood…” He violently remembered what it looked like again the black wood of barracks, dripping into the dust below. Of the way it coagulated in the mouths of the dead, choking off the screams of the _still living_ … “…then I wouldn’t be a doctor, _koteczek_.” He stood on sturdy legs and laced one bare arm around Rog’s bony back and the other under his knees, in order to smoothly pull the younger boy up and into his arms.

The young bloke yelped like a kicked puppy, a mishandled kitten, eyes stretched open comically wide, in what was likely both a little bit of pain and a lot of surprise.

“What in the bloody sodding—?!“

The youth was instantly struggling to get free, but his mildly annoyed captor only tightened his hold.

“ _Koteczek_ , stop! You’re going to hurt yourself, numpty! You boys live close by, remember? It shouldn’t be too far a walk and the last thing I want is for you to faint on route from the blood loss.” He tried to sound as soothing as possible, swallowing a grunt because the skinny boy was fucking _dense._ “Noses tend to bleed torrentially, so make sure you hold pressure where I showed you, okay? Right on the spot between cartilage and bone.”

The blonde honest-to-goodness _pouted,_ but did exactly that, although he looked none too pleased about the impromptu ride.

“What does that _mean_ anyway?”

Roger asked, as Jacob-Alexander followed the other blokes down the street. Platforms, whom Roger had introduced as _John_ , was hanging a few paces back, quietly making sure that the blonde was safe with the veritable stranger that toted him along. While Curls and Black Fingernails were arguing about something else a few paces ahead.

Another petty squabble of who Roger had deemed as: _Brian and Freddie_ , respectively.

“ _Koteczek?_ ” A soft breathy laugh escaped from his chest. “It’s Polish for _kitty-cat.”_ Which, to his defense, the boy in his arms did in fact resemble a pissed off feline, complete with hisses, sharp claws and all.

But before Roger could indignantly object to the pet-name, the young doctor cut in.

“They aren’t always literal, you know. My mother called me her _tygrysku_ , her tiger and my twin sister was _zabka_ , which is frog. _So_ …?” He smiled and so did Rog, the blood finally starting to slow, carving its little rivers of crimson that dripped past his lips and down his chin.

“Why frog?”

Jacob-Alexander shrugged, “…She had a really big mouth as well, the only proof that we were twins.” 

While Roger huffed a _raspy, boozy, bloody_ laugh into his shoulder, the doctor thought of his incandescent twin sister, the way she still looked in his dreams. All fluffy black curls big enough to rival Brian’s and those dark, dangerous eyes. They were so _beautiful,_ just like their mother’s, jars of bottled moonlight.

She’d had the same dimple on her chin that he still sported.

Although with his soft lemon-cake yellow hair and those gargantuan eyes with irises such a faded blue that they were almost translucent, he and Kirsty had very little in common physically for a pair of twins.

_Perhaps that was why He had liked them so much._

The nearly London flat was tiny, warm and smelled like four young men lived in it.

The young physician set his patient down on the countertop, near a sink overflowing with takeout containers and dirty dishes. John had blessedly flipped the light-switch on his way in and made sure the doctor could truly assess his patient, looking for any sort of deformity in the nasal bridge, it was thankfully whole. Just swollen and bloody with all the soft tissue damage from the blow. He wet a cleaner dishtowel and slowly began to wipe the blood away from the younger blonde’s face. Taking a moment to flash his penlight in those pupils to check how reactive they were.

“So you’re Polish.” Roger announced, sounding all too pleased with himself as Jacob-Alexander nodded.

“Yes, I am.”

No need to check for an altered mental state, Roger had been eagerly prying for the past ten minutes.

“But you sound American.”

“That’s where I went to Medical School, _Harvard_.”

Freddie came over to sit on the other side of the sink, batting those smudged kohl-lined eyes of his, as he watched Roger and Jacob-Alexander interact. “Ooo, an Ivy League graduate! Not only did we find a doctor, but we found one of the best, darlings!”

The physician in question, rolled his eyes, even as a hot flush stained his cheeks. Wondering where all his natural fight had gone, wondering why these boys made him feel as tame as a kitten, when he was meant to be a tiger.

“I wouldn’t go that far, but _thank you, Freddie_.”

He elected against physically splinting Roger’s swollen and quickly bruising nose, as it would probably only hurt the troublesome bloke in the long-run. He didn't seem like the kind to put up with not wearing sunglasses for too long. 

“Don’t be so humble, dear! It doesn’t suit you.”

 _Darling. Dear._ The casual endearments made him smile. Then, as usual, the flickers of memory came unbidden, he half-expected to turn his head and regard Freddie again and see the too-bright wash of a pink triangle band around that too-skinny arm of his. As if his hair and skin color weren’t dangerous enough. He remembered when his world had been defined by _yellow stars, pink triangles, red triangles, black triangles, red bars, letters P for Pole, F for French, T for Czech… war prisoners._

Then he fought the urge to violently vomit into the sink.

“Oh, _bugger!”_ Roger’s hand reached out to cup his cheek, the skin icy cold, Freddie was peering at him with something like _concern_ for the young doctor in his eyes. “You look awfully pale, dear, are you sure you’re alright?”

Jacob-Alexander cleared his throat, painting up a bright and pretty smile on his face. “I was at a pub you know, doing the usual sort of things people do at pubs.” _Drinking, being a complete prat. The status quo._ “Well, it’s not broken. But make sure you’re careful over the next few days, don’t head-butt anybody, alright?” A little laugh. “You still have some soft tissue damage, but icing in fifteen minute intervals should bring down most of that and I can write you a prescription for an anti-inflammatory as well.”

He tugged his script pad out of his backpack, where he handed a few more rolls of _thankfully clean_ gauze to Roger, and scrawled on a page almost absentmindedly, tearing off the top sheet to press it into Brian’s hands. He seemed like the most responsible party in the room. 

His hands didn’t shake and he was proud of it.

“Thank you, Dr. Jankowski.”

John stopped him on his way out the door, a small smile twitching to life on his lips, and something like genuine relief in his eyes.

“No thanks needed,” Jacob-Alexander had laughed, with his naturally fever-bright eyes closed, to feel the way the moonlight dappled his cheeks. “And please call me anything but _that_.”

  
-X-

  
_“It’s the leftover humans. The survivors. They’re the ones I can’t stand to look at, although on many occasions I still fail. I deliberately seek out the colors to keep my mind off them, but now and then, I witness the ones who are left behind, crumbling among the jigsaw puzzle of realization, despair, and surprises. They have punctured hearts. They have beaten lungs. Which in turn brings me to the subject I am telling you about tonight, or today, or whatever the hour and color. It’s the story of one of those perpetual survivors –an expert at being left behind.”_

― Markus Zusak

  
-X-

  
Darija Jankowski bore two children in her family’s cramped ghetto room in Łódź, Poland in the year 1941.

The gunshots outside heralded the wailing of the babe cradled in her right arm, the younger of the two. His cries were deafening, his little face twisted up and redder than any other living creature she'd ever seen. And when she finally brought his little face up to her breast, he latched on like a ravenous tiger cub and sucked vehemently. Lemon-colored curls dampened with sweat and amniotic fluid, his enormous vapid eyes opened far too early, yet still tracking her every move. 

His older sister on the other hand, wasn't anywhere near as hardy. The babe in her left arm, dark-haired and weak, didn't even latch until prompted. And even then, she only swallowed a few good mouthfuls before letting go. She didn't wail, so much as give off a few frail cries before sagging against her mother, as if the very act of living was too much for her. 

The other women in the barracks, the ones who had nursed her through her long arduous labor, told her that it was through God's luck that she'd given birth to twins. 

As the dark-haired one likely wouldn't last the night. Weak babies never did in the ghetto.

Silver-haired and sharp-tongued, one of the older women had simply rapped on the boy babe's scrawny chest once more, sending him into a fit of unholy screeches that made her own chest ache. 

"That boy's a born piper, a born screamer, a fighter. Lungs like that are going to make him a mighty handful one day." 

_Her little tiger._

Strong lungs and an even bigger mouth to boot. 

_Yaakov-Aleksander._

Named for a biblical twin and the defender of men.

She rocked both her tiny babies throughout the night, waiting with bated breath for her daughter’s last puttering gasp, for the grief-stricken shattering wails that would in turn herald her son's unspeakable loss. Neither ever came. And upon first daybreak, she saw why. 

She saw the way that her son’s tiny, almost translucent, fingers curled into his sister’s charcoal curls. The way that both babies clung to each other, as if the very notion of being apart was foreign and wrong. It was almost as if she'd given birth to a single soul being housed in two bodies. Yet Darija was content. Evidently, succumbing to her fate was not in Kirsty’s future yet, not until she could find a way to take her twin along with her. 

Darija whispered stories of her youth in dulcet tones, to the babies pillowed against her milk-rounded chest, the only thing round about her, and wished for another world to raise her children in.

 

-X-

  
_“There were stars. They burned my eyes.”_

― Markus Zusak

  
-X-

  
At school they had called him _Motormouth._

Those loud and long demanding cries that had earned him his name and then nickname as a baby, never quite let up. They turned into words and those words never stopped coming. 

He soon learned how to use them well enough. 

Everything with the boy was a battle, a prelude to another bloody war.

Whether it was a riot on the playground or a protest when he was grown.

A past girlfriend had once compared him to the _sun_ , bright, burning high in the sky lightyears away from them, too hard to focus on for more than a few seconds at a time.

A runaway train, a car without a speedometer, a monstrous creature always _going going going._ Always fighting, always waging war for the benefit of those who could not.

_Your mouth will get you killed._

He lost everything when he was four years old. His country, his name, his family.

He stood in the sunlight of a snowy January, feet bare and matchstick arms empty, reaching up to a soldier who carried him out of that place. There was a picture of it somewhere, he was sure, the soldiers took a lot of pictures that day.

He left everything behind him as he was carried from that accursed place.

Never would he starve again.

Never would he be taken from the people and places that he loved again. Never would he smell the scent of death or feel the reaper’s fingers digging into his pants as he walked, wrapping around his ankles, desperate to drag him into the hell below, one that would never compare to the hell he had already seen. _Never again._

A tiger had risen from the depths of that place.

A _motormouth,_ who would never condone the maltreatment of another living creature.

Never again.

  
_Your mouth will get you killed._

  
-X-

  
_“The consequence of this is that I'm always finding humans at their best and worst. I see their ugly and their beauty, and I wonder how the same thing can be both.”_

― Markus Zusak

  
-X-

  
The young doctor ordered several bags of fresh groceries to be brought up to that little flat in London, the messy one where four boys lived.

Jacob-Alexander knew what _hunger_ looked like. And he would not tolerate it being where it was easy enough for him to fix, with the wave of a hand and a checkbook.

He would send an envelope with money tucked inside every month like clockwork, the stack of red stamped bills on the boys’ counter had not gone unseen. A couple of poor uni students, a resale stall in Kensington Market and a sometimes band did not make for a healthy sum of money. Certainly not enough to live on.

Even as they tried to send the envelopes back, arguing against his _‘charity_ ’, he kept sending them and eventually, the boys begrudgingly seemed to accept it.

He got free concert tickets in return.

Invitations to pubs where the boys were playing.

Even if it meant sneaking away from work, he would be at _every single one._

Months later, he would wonder _why_ those boys had gotten under his skin so deeply.

 _Why_ when they called him for medical help, he immediately _went..._

  
-X-

  
“ _Somewhere, far down, there was an itch in his heart, but he made it a point not to scratch it. He was afraid of what might come leaking out.”_

― Markus Zusak

  
-X-

 

 


	2. A Pair Of Platform Heels

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Currently messy and unedited, but I'll fix it :S

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Features graphic mentions of the Holocaust and casual racism* :(
> 
> The song quotes are You by Keaton Henson.

  
_“If you must wait,_  
_Wait for them here in my arms as I shake_  
_If you must weep,_  
_Do it right here in my bed as I sleep…”_

 

Jacob-Alexander felt his mouth pull into a frown as he examined the swollen ankle and foot in his lap.

He used the curve of his bent elbow to prop up the affected limb, examining the sheer amount of youthful folly before him and make sure the platform shoe-related casualty was elevated higher than Freddie’s heart, in order to reduce some of the blood flow to the injured area. Less blood flow would hopefully mean less swelling in the long run.

The sable-haired youth in question, was chomping down hard on his bottom lip with his prominent teeth exposed, not bothering to cover them up like he had before. Whether that was through trust, or the sheer amount of pain he was in, was anyone’s guess. Freddie’s usual tan complexion was almost chalky white and he looked very near to tears, viciously biting back a cry every time that Jacob-Alexander so much as touched his injured foot.

Which was probably why the boys had phoned him when they did.

 _Maybe-fractures_ could be scary things.

“Freddie, _kochanie_ …” _Dear._ Those heavily lashed dark eyes flicked up to his, hazy around the edges for a moment before focusing in on his face. “How much pain are you in right now? One being none and ten being unbearable?” The boy’s pulse was amazingly rapid.

“Six.”

It came out like a whimper, cracked in the middle.

So the doctor was going to guess eight or nine truthfully.

“Can you stand on it?” A compulsory question, there was no way he was letting Freddie try to get up off the couch, and the scathing look he gave the boy _screamed it._

But before Freddie could even answer the sodding question, Roger was jumping in with a pointed look of his own. “He’s going to say he can, but he really can’t. A couple of pensioners on a street-corner had to practically carry him home.”

Not even Freddie’s soft pink blush was enough to properly darken his cheeks again.

 _That_ , wasn’t great.

He sighed, “Okay, _motylku_. I know you don’t want to hear this, but you need an X-Ray.” _Badly._ The deep throaty moan from his patient was immediate and Freddie even leaned back to press the heels of his palms into his closed eyes. Blocking out the world that dared to defy him. “The swelling and bruising of the affected area occurred fairly quickly despite the elevation, and if you can’t bear any weight then something could be seriously wrong. I’m going to splint it for you and then I’ll bring you by the clinic, okay? So you don’t have to go to hospital.” They just blinked at him. He sighed.

The young doctor was beginning to fear that the troublemakers were afraid of hospitals, much like Freddie openly detested the dentist.

_(Yet somehow, he didn’t count? Why was **he** so different?)_

He used a rolled up towel, this horridly faded pink thing that looked older than the flat they were in, to keep the foot in a comfortable position and relatively erect, and padded just in case it was jostled. He then used some gauze to wrap it up quite nicely. A present no one wanted to receive. Freddie openly scowled and tried to spout some nonsense about dramatics and that he was supposed to be the dramatic one, not them. That going to clinic was just a waste of time. _(As if a hot bath was going to remedy this)._

“Oh come off it, Fred. You knew I wasn’t going to let you off without proper care if you had a serious injury.” Cue another pout. “Besides, you need to be fighting fit in order to jump and gyrate on stage like you do.”

The dark-haired human butterfly rolled his eyes, but then the doctor’s words seemed to register and a question lit up like a stoked fire in his eyes. “Wait, how do you know what I do onstage?” It was the physician’s turn to roll his eyes. What was it with these boys and being so naturally petulant?

“I’ve seen you play?” He answered, absentmindedly confused, elevating the puffy limb as he packed up his bag, relieved that Freddie had injured a leg so he was less likely to run away or make a break for it.

“When?!” Roger demanded, sounding all of five years old, hands on his bony hips, feet in a straddle as if he was trying to confront him or something. The older blonde rolled his eyes fondly again.

“Oh I don’t know, _koteczek_ , probably every time you’ve invited me?” Sliding on his backpack and grabbing a ratty blanket off the adjacent ottoman to wrap securely around Freddie’s trembling form, lest he get cold and go into shock. Willpower couldn’t prevent that, despite all the frontman’s visible attempts of the contrary. _(He really needed to start carrying more trauma shit in his bag for these dumb-asses)._

“You really came every time?!” Brian blinked in surprise and then stilled, wow, even Major Tom was shocked by the idea.

“Why didn’t you _say anything?!”_ John sounded affronted at the same time that Brian was shocked.

Jacob-Alexander sighed. “Oh please, the last thing you want is this old fuddy-duddy cramping your rock and roll style.” Complete with a little self-deprecating smile.

“…How old are you expecting us to believe you are?” Rog griped, twisting his thumbs viciously, still in that godforsaken straddle. Maybe it was an attempt to look bigger? Like a peacock ruffling its feathers? “You look about the same age as Deaky and he’s nineteen.”

“Wait, what?! You’re _nineteen?!”_ He whipped around to look at John, a fierce protectiveness burning his chest. “You’re practically still in bloody nappies! How are you lot allowed to live alone?!” Instantly, he was glad for the money and groceries he’d been sending. It was so worrying. Sure, he’d been alone for most of his life, but those skills were hard to teach, sometimes it was nice to have a cushion. A safety net, just in case.

He wanted to be the safety net for the boys in front of him.

“Oi!” Roger looked more offended than John did. “I’ll have you know I’m twenty-one!”

The young doctor raised an eyebrow. “Ah yes, halfway to the nursing home.” His voice as dry as the bloody desert.

“Well, how old are you then, dearie?”

“Twenty-nine, but thirty come this October.”

_Yom Kippur._

_The Day of Atonement._

He drew sometimes when he couldn’t sleep, an old sketchbook propped in his lap, smudged charcoal staining his fingertips. Most of the time they were memories. Dark, sad things.

It was why he never showed anyone the art that littered the pages.

A bleached bone-white skeletal child with black holes for eyes, in the striped garb of a prisoner.

Illuminated by a sky of yellow _Stars of David_ , bright as his hair.

  
-X-

  
_“If you must mourn, my love_  
_Mourn with the moon and the stars up above_  
_If you must mourn,_  
_Don't do it alone.”_

  
-X-

  
It was a gray place, soulless and desolate.

So different from the rest of the landscape. Beyond the fences were foliage and life. Inside were only echoes of death and the smell of burning flesh.

Nothing grew in the soil, nothing besides the dust that was whipped up by heavy boots during the daily march of the prisoners. Those powerful lungs and stubborn streak made him defiant, so they hated him. He spoke back to the scientists and soldiers until they punched the baby teeth free from his mouth, as soon as they could come. He tore the number off his clothing often enough that they tattooed it into his reedy arm with a ink-filled pen-nib. Over and over and over again.

They beat him when he wouldn't scream and beat him harder when he did. _So why not fight them?_

Infections festered in his open wounds and fevers nearly killed him more often than not.

It was a miracle that he wasn't gassed straight away like his mother or soon after.

And even more of one, that he wasn't shot where he stood for his pure insolence alone. 

That miracle was his twin sister.

Kirsty had saved his life by simply existing.

They had been holding hands on the train platform that day.

 _“Zwillinge?”_ A soldier had been yelling, in every language he knew. “ _Ikrek? Jumeaux? Bliźnięta?”_

_Twins?_

Their mother had pushed them forwards.

She hadn’t known then, what it _meant._

Her toddlers with no baby fat and large searching eyes that widened ever greater, born into the ghetto. The soldier promptly swept them up into his strong uncaring arms, carrying them over to another commanding figure, a man who waited on the outskirts of the platform with a saccharine sweet smile alight on his lips.

  
-X-

  
“ _If you must leave,_  
_Leave as though fire burns under your feet_  
_If you must speak,_  
_Speak every word as though it were unique…”_

  
_-_ X-

  
He wasn’t sure if it was meant to be a mark _for or against_ his character, the way that no one even batted an eye as he walked into the near-empty clinic in his street clothes, a skinny youth in his arms and three more trailing after him like veritable clutch of lost ducklings.

The seasoned nurses behind the counter, Clara and Vivian, just smiled fondly and waved him on, well used to his antics by now.

They would whisper once he was out of ear-shot. “ _The Führer_ is back at it again.” As if they were calling him a hard-ass or a drill-sergeant. A comparison only further illustrated by his sharp tongue, the hint of a slavic accent in his voice, the blonde of his hair, and the blue of his eyes. If they'd ever seen his left arm, if they'd known about his past, then they would've been sure to swallow that nickname back as soon it had come. But they didn't _know._ He didn't tell them.

He rarely spoke of his past. And even if he did, he certainly wouldn't have started with the horror that began it. 

_(How quickly the world forgets. How quickly the disconnect grows)._

“Is anyone in X-Ray?” Trying to squint out at the near-empty waiting room and see who may have needed such care. Mentally triaging with a pair of tan noodle-arms wrapped securely around his throat.

“No, you go right on ahead, Dr. Jankowski.” The nurses giving a pointed look at Freddie huddled in his arms, the boy was curled up as if trying to press their bodies as close as possible, while appearing as small as could be. He tried to be as gentle as he could.

The doctor was humming as he took a few X-Rays, doing his best to move the hefty machinery instead of his agonized patient.

Freddie’s face was still creased with pain, even after the pain pills and muscle relaxant the blonde had given him upon arrival. But the stilted humming seemed to calm him, let him slip into a fitful little doze as the doctor worked his magic.

Then, all at once, the physician remembered being small in Poland, back when he'd be sitting upright in his mother's lap as she combed through his hurricane of cornsilk blonde hair, singing lowly in Yiddish.

He couldn't remember the words to that lullaby anymore, but he knew the tune still. Part of him thought he always would.

He would always carry it with him.

And he had no qualms about carrying Freddie around either.

He may have been short, stunted from those early years in the camp, but he was sturdy. He had been laboring day and night since he was two years old, and had survived on much less than proper sustenance for most of his formative years. He had resigned himself long ago to never getting any taller, to always looking younger than he should’ve.

But yes, he certainly had enough strength in him to easily carry all the beanpoles he had somehow accrued.

“It’s not broken!” He was smiling ear-to-ear. “Just badly sprained. I’ll splint it for you and grab some crutches to go with your pain meds, yeah?”

All Freddie did was smile back at him weakly, pale and far too still on the exam table, a few nurses had come by to fuss, but Jacob-Alexander had pointed shooed them away with a single look. He was a Motormouth and little shit above all else. 

Besides, Fred had all the comfort he needed.

His head was pillowed in Deaky’s lap instead of lying on the cold examination bench and Brian was rubbing small circles onto the back of that spindly pianist’s hand, kissing the supple skin delicately every so often, while dear Roger was nervously stomping his feet, keeping up a constant racket the same way he kept a steady grounding pressure on Freddie’s uninjured foot. All three looking at their frontman like he was the sun, the center of their universe, and all seemed horribly worried for him. Oh.

_Oh!_

He could have kicked himself for not realizing before.

That they were more than just roommates, bandmates, that they were _together._

The doctor couldn’t help the soft smile that followed.

But he didn't stare, instead he used a four-inch elastic bandage to make a posterior ankle splint for that puffy limb. Doing taut figure-8s to pad the bony prominences around the swollen ankle joint and then using fiberglass to splint the back of the foot and part of the calf for support, adding a few more elastic bandages to keep the ankle at a 90-degree angle. The tip of his tongue pooched out the corner of his cheek as he worked and Freddie huffed a tired laugh.

“You look like you’re sucking off a large one, dear.”

The doctor smiled, still very much focused on causing his idiot the least amount of pain. “Hush _motylku_ , you’re almost done.”

Freddie smirked, getting a little more color back on those cheeks, Bri whispering something lowly in his ear, something that sounded like mythology. Or perhaps the drugs were finally kicking in after all.

“ _Motylku?”_ John asked, quirking an eyebrow.

“Butterfly.”

The injured boy squawked indignantly at the sound of that, struggling to sit up properly _(Roger and Brian had to help him do so, propping him up with their shoulders)._

Freddie _was_ a human butterfly though, his personality and beautiful smile were his substitute for enormous iridescent wings.

Often times, calling someone a _butterfly_ in Poland was to call them scatterbrained, or flighty.

But not the boy in front of him, with his mussed hair, tear-stained cheeks and rumpled clothes. He was beyond words.

Freddie was _Freddie._

  
-X-

  
_“If you must die, sweetheart_  
_Die knowing your life was my life's best part_  
_If you must die,_  
_Remember your life…”_

 

-X-

  
“So tell us more about you then, Jack?”

Not even a second’s peace after bundling them all up into a cab, giving up a whole day to come play A&E physician. _Shit, he really shouldn’t have gotten in after them._

The tiny blonde went on though, and the young doctor let his eyes wander, wondering if it was possible to absorb peroxide through the scalp. Perhaps that was why Rog was the way he was. Wait… _Jack?_

“We keep calling you for help and shit, but we don’t know anything about you.” That was a clearly defined pout and the physician resisted the all-encompassing urge to roll his eyes. Wondering, not for the first time, how this twenty-one-year-old boy managed to moonlight as a five-year-old.

“Roger, just let him be. We’re lucky enough that he bothered to help us at all.” Brian chastised, pointedly looking out the window with Freddie’s bony bum perched in his lap. The Persian beanpole was stretched across most of their legs and sleeping like the dead. Clearly the drugs had finally done their sacred duty.

“But—!” Jacob-Alexander was half-afraid that Brian was going to get himself bludgeoned to death by the sparkly shoe of a blonde gremlin. So he opened up that demanding mouth of his.

“What did you want to know?”

Instantly the younger man’s smile was blinding, turned towards him and a calloused hand was thrust mere inches away from his face. “My name’s Roger Meddows Taylor, I was born on July 26, 1949 in Truro. I’m studying dentistry but it’s as boring as all fuck, so I’m going to switch to something else, mark my bloody words.” Apparently it was time for formal introductions and the reiterating of what Jacob-Alexander _already knew_ about the four troublemaking brats in front of him. Little buggers they were. Roger’s frighteningly sharp elbow jabbed directly into Brian’s ribs at the sound of silence and the skinny bloke let out a little _oomph_ before:

“I’m Brian Harold May, I was born on July 19, 1947 in Hampton. I’m studying astrophysics with a specialization in interplanetary dust. It’s quite interesting really, there’s this phenomenon called the  _Zodical Dust Cloud_ and…” The young doctor marveled at the way the guitarist’s eyes lit up in excitement, even brighter than the stars he claimed to love so much. It was disarming to see the change that _love_ brought over the younger man. It softened every sharp edge and made him look so small, and so bloody precious. _Mój gwiazdeczko. My star._

“Yeah, yeah, _space-dust_. We _know_ , Bri.” Roger cut him off sharply with a little wave of his hand and it didn’t take a genius or any hyper-perceptive senses, to see past the flush on those pale cheeks, down to the hurt and shame that tightened the edges of his mouth.

“ _I_ don’t?” He reached out a hand and rested it on Brian’s angular knee. “Tell me about it later, yeah? I’d love to hear.” What was it about the boys in front of him that made him so _soft?_ Yet the mega-wattage smile that passed across the astrophysicist’s face, flashing those tiny fangs, made it well-worth every word.

Then it was Deaky’s turn, _Platforms,_ all quietness and calm one minute and then a veritable tempest the next. “I’m called John Richard Deacon, I was um… born on August 19, 1951 in Leicester. I’m studying electrical engineering.” _Kwiatuszku_. The young boy in front of him was like a _flower_. Blooming when he wanted to, and blooming as the most lovely in all of the garden.

“ _Freddie Fucking Mercury_ , darling. Born on September 5, 1946 in Stone Town. I graduated with my art degree from Ealing.” Fred sing-songed, still with his sweaty face buried in Brian’s neck. He seemed to be feeling quite a bit better though, his injured foot propped up on Deaky’s lap.

“Where in the bloody hell is _Stone Town?”_

“Zanzibar, dear.”

“You’re from bloody _Zanzibar?”_

He chuckled, softly.

Perhaps the boys knew as little about each other as they did about him.

He happily watched as Freddie and Roger went at it and almost forgot about himself, until Brian pointedly reached over to prod at his bicep.

“And you?”

Right. He cleared his throat with a blush of his own. “Oh… yes, um… _Jacob-Alexander Chayim Jankowski_ , born in Łódź, Poland in October of 1941. Graduated from Harvard Medical School, where I specialized in internal medicine.” Boring as all hell, but eh.

Roger quirked a fair brow. “You’re from a town called _Lodge?”_

“No, _Łódź._ ”

“Wog?” Even Freddie fell flat and the doctor had to smother a laugh behind his hand. Pronouncing the name of his hometown once more, like  _‘Wodge’_.

“ _Łódź_ , it’s a little town just outside of Warsaw.”

The ghetto was erected in 1939, which was why he was born into its walls. The Nazis called the little town _Litzmannstadt_ , but in the hearts of the people, it was always Łódź. It always had been. The ghetto lasted only until 1944, before it was liquidated and the human chattel were removed. But even years later, Polish residents would walk faster down that stretch of town. They didn't want to catch a look at the scour upon their home. Of the crime in which most were complacent. Or of the bodies that littered the walls. The bones that would never leave, long after flesh had rotted away. 

They, like the scars left behind, would last a lifetime. 

  
-X-

  
_“If you must fight,_  
_Fight with yourself and your thoughts in the night_  
_If you must work,_  
_Work to leave some part of you on this earth…”_

  
-X-

  
“What _day_ in October?”

“Huh?” 

John didn’t properly ask him anything, until they were all inside the cluttered little flat once more, Roger and Brian having gone to ready the bedroom for Freddie, the pills making him drowsy and a fair bit loopy. The dark-haired boy had been giggling nonstop into Brian’s curls.

“What day were you born in October?”

Deaky was looking away from him, picking at a threadbare blanket that was draped over the back of the nearby couch. The young physician was surprised at the question, as it was... _not_ the one he'd been expecting. “Oh, I’m not sure. I usually just celebrate on Yom Kippur.” An ensuing shrug reiterated his point. He was so young when he lost his family, that all he really remembered was that his birthday was on _Yom Kippur,_ and because of the way the calendar so often changed, it was most likely in early October, but he couldn't be sure what day.

“On … _what?”_

The bassist looked so confused and a little laugh bubbled out of Jacob-Alexander’s mouth without him meaning to. “It’s The Day of Atonement in Judaism.” A day of fasting and sadness, of penance, that was also the day of his birth. Part of the High Holidays, the holiest day of the year. 

“…You’re Jewish? And you were born in Poland… in 1941?”

The blonde could see the cogs turning around and around in the bassist’s mussed brunet head. Waiting for him to put all the dots together and then wincing when he finally did, those watering eyes flitting over to Jacob-Alexander's left sleeve, covered by his red sweater to match the ribbon in his hair. 

“Yes…” A little sigh as he reached out to nudge Deaky’s arm with his own, watching those dark eyes track the movement with horror. “You can _ask_ , Deaky. It’s okay. I—” He was cut off by another towhead bending around the bedroom's doorway, Roger grinning from ear to ear and dangling a pair of vaguely scuffed platform shoes between his fingers. The red-handed perpetrators from earlier.

“So Dr. Jankowski, in your expert medical opinion, should these shoes be tossed for the safety of Freds everywhere?”

Instantly an indignant voice rose up from the bedroom. “Oi! I heard that, darling! Touch my shoes and you’ll be losing one of those sandpapery things you call hands!" Then a pause. "Your _wanking one!_ "

The red flush was like a beacon against Roger's cheeks. 

“My hands are as soft as a baby’s _bum_ , I’ll have you know! At least I don’t look like I give _rides at the carnival.”_

“Well, maybe not as _a pony,_ dear.”

  
-X-

  
_“If you must live, darling one,_  
_Just live_  
_Just live_

_Just live…”_

  
_-_ X-

 


End file.
